If you’ve been in Island Park lately, you’ve seen people (or the evidence of people) shoveling roof and porches. By all accounts it’s been an odd year. Normally, roofs will slide, reducing the load. But this year, even houses that normally slide are holding fast to the snow.
The building code for Island Park states that roofs must be able to hold 135 pounds per square foot. So, let’s see. If you have a chunk of snow 3 feet by 3 feet by five or six feet high, it would have to be over 1,000 pounds to put your roof in danger – theoretically. But what happens if one side of the roof unloads and the other doesn’t (that happens pretty frequently?) Now we’re not talking weight that is bearing straight down. We’ve got lateral forces involved, and most homes aren’t engineered for that.
Or what about the home I helped shovel the other day? The roof of the porch was attached to the wall of the cabin on one side and supported by columns (logs) on the other. What was happening was the weight on the porch was pulling laterally, and pulling the wall of the cabin over (literally it had moved the wall “out” over 2 inches. Had the snow been left on the porch, it could have easily and permanently impacted the structural integrity of the home.)
Snow removal is not cheap. Trailers are going for upwards of $250 and cabins with steep roofs and many valleys are fetching $1,000 or more. That’s pretty spendy…. until you consider the price of rebuilding because the snow tore your walls down.
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